Chicago's  Black  Traffic 


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ite  Girls 


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An  article  on  the  Great "  White  Slave"  Question 

ILLUSTRATED 


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.  3rau  QTururr-Zimtttrrtnamt,  fH.  S. 


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JEAN  TURNER -ZIMMERMANN,  M.  D. 


CHICAGO'S 

BLACK  TRAFFIC 


IN 


WHITE  GIRLS 


By 
MRS.  JEAN  TURNER-ZIMMERMANN,  M.  D. 


President  of  the 

CHICAGO   RESCUE   MISSION   and 
WOMAN'S  SHELTER 


AND 


Superintendent  of 

The   DEPARTMENT  OF  PURITY  AND  HEREDITY  of  the 
COOK  COUNTY  W.  C.  T.  U. 


733  Washington  Boulevard,  CHICAGO 


REV.  R.  IRA  STONE 

Superintendent  of  the  Chicago  Rescue  Mission 


Foreword 

|W[Y  SOLE  AIM  in  bringing  this  little  pam- 
phlet  to  you  is  to  definitely  call  the 
attention  of  the  men  and  women  of  the  Central 
Western  States,  and  especially  those  of  the  City 
of  Chicago  into  whose  hands  it  may  come,  to  the 
vicious,  thoroughly  organized  white-slave  traffic 
of  to-day,  and  its  attendant,  far-reaching,  hor- 
rible results  upon  the  young  man  and  woman- 
hood of  our  Land. 

During  a  constant  residence  covering  seven 
years  of  time  in  the  central  slum  districts  of  the 
West  and  South  Sides  of  Chicago,  I  have  gained 
much  actual  knowledge  of  the  questions  of  pov- 
erty, drink  and  prostitution  among  the  lost  men 
and  women  of  these  great  neigh borhoods,  have 
become  personally  acquainted  with  very  many  of 
them,  visiting  them,  listening  to  their  heart  stories 
and  growing  to  know  much  of  their  inside  lives, 
and  have  learned  a  real  tender  interest  and  pity 
for  them  in  their  remorseful,  helpless,  hopeless 
condition. 

All  incidents,  references  and  statistics  (as 
far  as  possible)  herein  given  are  strictly 
authentic,  and  have  been  collected  with  great 
care  and  fairness  either  by  myself  or  my 
assistants. 

Statistical  references  have  been  taken  from 
the  writings  of  United  States  Attorney  Sims, 


6  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

Rev.  Ernest  A.  Bell  and  others  engaged  in  prose- 
cuting and  reform  work,  all  of  whom  I  thank 
sincerely  and  wish  well  in  what  they  are  accom- 
plishing for  good  where  it  is  so  desperately 
needed  in  this  submerged  underworld  of  our  city. 


So  in  bringing  this  eighth  edition  of  CHICA- 
GO'S BLACK  TRAFFIC  IN  WHITE  GIRLS  to  you,  a 
part  of  which  has  already  been  published  under 
the  title  of  CHICAGO'S  SOUL  MARKET,  it  is  the 
aim  of  the  writer  to  give  more  thought  and  time 
to  real,  existing  conditions — descriptions  and 
actual  facts  relative  to  public  prostitution  and 
its  attendant  frightful  results,  rather  than  to  such 
matter  as  incidents,  "cases,"  etc.,  knowledge  of 
which  can  usually  be  acquired  by  simply  reading 
the  daily  press  of  Chicago  or  New  York.  All 
descriptions,  statistics  and  photographs  are 
taken  by  the  author  from  actual  contact  with  the 
great  underworld  and  quoted  with  names,  dates, 
etc.,  of  those  concerned  and  are  absolutely 
authentic . 

We,  together  with  thousands  of  others- 
editors,  legislators,  club  women,  ministers  arid 
everybody  else  who  has  the  welfare  of  the  girl- 
hood of  our  Land  at  heart,  believe  that  the  time 
for  prudery  and  concealment  is  past  and  that 
honest  men  and  women  should  know  what  there 
is  to  know  about  this  thoroughly  organized, 
solidly  financed  system  of  White  Slavery  flourish- 
ing and  growing  in  America  to-day — a  system 
which  controls  and  ruins  hundreds  of  thousands 


Chicago's  11  Jack  Traffic  in  \\liitc  Girls  7 

of  women  in  our  midst  every  year  and  whicli 
requires  a  constant  sacrifice  of  more  than  sixty 
thousand  young  girls  annually  to  feed  its  death 
and  disease  dealing  machinery. 

Most  people  think  of  harlotry  or  prostitution  as 
something  secret — something  to  be  kept  from  the 
public  eye,  something  to  be  ashamed  of.  Not 
so  to  the  great  throng  of  Chicago  whore-mongers. 
Everything  that  can  be  done  to  attract  attention 
n nd  custom  is  done  by  the  five  thousand  men 
and  hundreds  of  hideous,  brutish  madams  who 
in  this  city  exploit  the  bodies  and  live  off  the 
earnings  of  thirty  thousand  public  women  in 
our  midst.  The  twenty-seven  hundred  (quoting 
from  a  statement  of  Chief  of  Police  Stewart) 
houses  of  ill-fame  here  are  conducted  with  as 
much  publicity  and  advertising  as  the  grocery 
or  meat  market  nearby.  Each  adjoining  and 
nearby  saloon,  with  its  wine  rooms  and  booths, 
is  an  advertising  and  recruiting  agency;  the 
ward  politician,  the  officers  on  the  beat,  the 
common  "pimp"  and  the  recognized  whore- 
mongers, work  harmoniously  together  to  exploit 
this  vast  business. 

Reckoning  the  number  of  White  Slaves  in 
Chicago  at  thirty  thousand,  and  the  average 
number  of  men  entertained  by  each  of  these 
unfortunate  women  nightly  at  five  (a  very  low 
average)  with  an  average  per  man  of  one  dollar, 
there  is  poured  monthly  Four  Million  Five 
Hundred  Thousand  Dollars,  blood  money,  into 
the  coffers  of  these  human  dealers — as  the 
rental  for  profit  of  the  bodies  of  our  American 


8  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  WJiitc  Girls 

girl  and  her  alien  sister  who  has  been  mercilessly 
trapped,  lured  from  her  home  and  sold  into  the 
great  festering  cesspool,  without  the  slightest 
knowledge  of  our  customs  and  laws,  and  ruined 
forever. 

New  York  City  is  the  great  eastern  head- 
quarters and  westward  shipping  point  for  Ori- 
ental and  European  White  Slaves.  Mark  this 
statement : 

"Seventeen  hundred  girls,  by  actual  count,  were  lost 
on  the  way  front  New  York  to  Cl tic  ago  last  year,  according 
to  an  investigation  now  being  made  by  the  Commissioner 
of  Immigration .  Somehow  these  girls  were  spirited  away 
from  the  care  of  the  agents  to  zvhom  they  were  entrusted 
and  vvere  never  seen  nor  heard  of  again." 

Isn't  that  an  appalling  fact?  for  fact  it  is — 
seventeen  hundred  girls  lost  and  gone  forever 
just  from  this  one  line  of  travel  alone  and  in 
just  one  year!  These  girls,  who  came  to  this 
Country  to  better  themselves,  to  make  an  honest 
living,  broken  and  rotting  to-day  behind  bolts 
arid  bars  in  some  of  our  cities'  foul  dives,  or 
else  shipped  on  and  on  until  at  last  in  some 
Chinese  underground  cellar  or  under  the  lash  of 
a  South  American  or  Philippine  whore-master, 
Death  at  last  comes  to  the  rescue. 

Please  remember,  as  you  read  this,  that 
America  is  becoming  more  and  more  un-Ameri- 
can every  day.  Each  ship,  each  train  West- 
ward or  Eastward  bound,  is  now  daily  dumping 
into  our  Land,  so  lately  the  goal  of  the  home- 
seeker  from  Germany,  Sweden,  Ireland,  etc., 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  9 

the  real  future  citizen — thousands  of  the  scum 
and  vice  and  criminal  element  of  South  Eastern 
Europe,  Asia  and  the  Orient,  and  remember 
too  that  a  short  five-years  of  residence  here  con- 
verts the  filthiest  criminal  from  Turkey,  Arabia, 
Syria,  Italy,  or  of  any  place  else  where  vice  and 
brutality  reign  supreme,  into  an  American 
citizen  with  the  right  to  vote  into  office  men 
who  will  and  are  sworn  to  protect  and  aid  in 
every  possible  way  the  Jewish,  Russian,  French 
or  Chinese  whore- master  as  he  rents  a  shanty 
and  proceeds  to  fatten  on  the  very  life-blood  of 
the  young  girlhood  of  this  and  other  lands. 

JEAN  TURNER-ZIMMERMANN,  M.  D. 


Open  prostitution — White  Slavery,  as  it  exists 
to-day  in  Chicago,  is  almost  entirely  under  foreign 
control.  Of  the  twenty-seven  hundred  houses 
of  ill-fame  in  Chicago,  a  very  large  percentage 
are  owned  and  controlled  by  foreigners  from 
Southeastern  Europe,  while  almost  without 
exception  all  Levee  and  White  Slave  resorts  in 
the  segregated  districts  are  under  the  direct 
ownership  of  the  moral  and  civic  degenerates  of 
the  French,  Italian,  Syrian,  Russian,  Jewish 
or  Chinese  races — once  in  a  great  while  you  may 
find  a  German  or  Swedish  whore-master,  but 
very  seldom — an  American  or  an  Englishman 
conducting  such  a  business  is  almost  entirely 
unknown.  American  men  raise  the  girlhood, 
make  the  laws  and  elect  the  officials  whereby 
this  bloody  business  may  be  carried  on  and 
exploited  by  a  foaming  pack  of  foreign  hell- 
hounds, who  after  their  work  of  death  is  accom- 
plished and  their  coffers  filled,  go  home  to  their 
South  Europe  or  Turkish  haunts  with  their  blood 
and  soul  money,  to  lives  of  filth  and  idleness  in 
their  own  lands. 

I  appeal  in  the  name  of  Jehovah,  to  the 
Church,  to  the  women's  clubs,  to  the  labor 
federations  and  all  honorable  Jews  and  others  of 
foreign  birth  who  have  come  to  America  for  a 
home  and  a  decent,  honorable  living,  to  aid  in 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \VJiite  Girls  11 

cvory  possible  way  the  great  work  now  going 
on  to  eradicate  segregated,  protected  White 
Slavery  from  our  Land. 

EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  DAILY  PAPERS 

Quoting  from  the  Daily  Press,  May  4,  regard- 
ing the  recent  investigations  in  New  York  con- 
cerning the  question  of  White  Slavery  by  the 
Rockefeller  jury  (which  after  buying  two  girls 
themselves,  later  declared,  "there  is  no  traffic 
in  women  in  New  York") : 

Harry  Levenson,  the  acknowledged  "trader"  of 
women  who  is  in  the  Tombs  under  $25,000  bail, 
made  a  startling  confession  to  the  District  Attorney 
to-night,  giving  names  of  men  and  women  whose 
sole  occupation  is  dealing  in  unfortunates. 

"  I  know  of  three  places  in  New  York,"  Levenson 
said,  "where  five  to  ten  girls  are  kept  constantly  at 
hand  for  sale.  At  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night  one 
of  them,  two  or  the  whole  ten,  can  be  bought  by  any 
one  with  the  money  to  pay  for  them.  They  can  be 
shipped  anywhere  at  an  hour's  notice." 

GIVES    HINT    ON   ARRESTS 

The  "trader"  gave  to  Mr.  Whitman  the  addresses 
of  the  three  places,  which  are  known  as  "stockades." 
He  also  made  suggestions  as  to  how  their  operators 
might  be  apprehended. 

More  than  that,  Levenson  told  how  the  financial 
arrangements  of  the  sales  are  made  and  how  recruits 
are  obtained. 

Agents  are  continually  at  work  obtaining  young 
girls,  the  prisoner  said.  The  slave  sellers  do  not 


12  Chicago 's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

want  hardened  women,  he  explained;  they  want 
pretty,  immature  girls.  The  agents  are  generally 
well  dressed  women  who  ingratiate  themselves  with 
their  childish  victims  at  matinees  and  moving-picture 
shows,  and  by  dining  them  and  painting  rosy- 
pictures  of  a  life  of  ease,  win  them  away  from 
their  homes  or  their  ill-paid  positions. 

"When  there  is  a  call  for  girls,"  Levenson  con- 
tinued, "the  buyer  hands  over  the  money  paid  for 
them  to  the  keeper.  Then  an  agent — these  are 
usually  men — take  the  girls  to  wherever  the  "order" 
comes  from.  These  agents  then  collect  10  per  cent 
of  the  girl's  weekly  earnings." 

Quoting  from  the  National  Prohibitionist, 
May  12: 

THE  SLAVE  TRADE  AND  THE  VOTER 
The  Christian  voter  who  reads,  and  reads  with 
blood  boiling,  as  the  blood  of  every  honest  man 
must,  the  shameful  story  of  the  exposure  of  the 
traffic  in  girls  especially  in  New  York,  must  not 
allow  his  imagination  to  run  away  with  his  reasoning 
faculties. 

Awful  as  the  story  is,  we  invite  attention,  not  to 
its  horror — the  horror  of  herds  of  little  girls  sold  at 
a  per-head  price  below  the  value  of  pigs — but  to  the 
practical  questions  of  responsibility  and  cure. 

Why  does  this  infamy  exist  in  our  cities? 
How  can  it  exist? 
Who  is  responsible? 

The  answers  all  come  to  one  point — the  govern- 
ments that  rule  our  cities. 

The  black  and  white  wretches  who  are  the  imme- 
diate agents  of  vice  are  hardly  worth  considering. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  WJiite  Girls  13 

They  are  mere  incidents.     Practically  it  is  a  waste 
of  time  to  even  prosecute  them. 

The  trail  of  the  real  criminal  leads  into  the 
police  headquarters,  leads  up  the  steps  of  the  city 
hall,  goes  across  the  threshold  of  the  mayor's  private 
office,  enters  the  homes  of  Christian  citizens  and  lies 
broad  through  the  doors  of  the  church. 

For  this  infamy  of  the  sale  of  innocent  girls  for 
vice  and  the  whole  wider,  deeper,  fouler  vice  system 
is  a  part  of  governmental  policy,  not  in  New  York 
and  Chicago  alone,  but  all  over  the  Country,  under 
Republican  and  Democratic  administration. 

The  very  district  attorney's  office  that  exposes 
these  particular  instances  of  crime  is  one  of  the 
strong  pillars  of  the  system  of  which  the  crime  is 
only  an  outcropping. 

Even  now  there  is  not  a  voice  lifted  in  official 
Chicago  and  New  York  in  favor  of  doing  the  one 
thing  that  alone  can  stop  the  sale  of  girls,  the  one 
thing  that  the  law  clearly  prescribes  in  the  matter — 
wiping  out  the  vice  preserves,  stopping  the  whole 
system  of  trade  in  vice.  This  fact  needs  to  be 
burned  deeply  into  the  hearts  of  American  voters: 
If  you  want  this  thing  to  go  on,  if  you  want  little 
girls  still  to  be  bought  and  sold  like  pigs,  if  you 
want  pure  young  lives  to  be  overwhelmed  in 
fathomless  shame,  all  you  need  to  do  to  help  keep 
up  the  system  is  to  keep  on  voting  for  men  who 
protect  these  criminals. 

Quoting  from  MeClure's  (July)  Magazine 
concerning  the  recent  investigation  of  the  White 
Slave  trade  in  New  York  City  by  a  specially 
appointed  jury: 

In  order  to  establish  the  existence  of  the  White 
Slave  traffic  Assistant  District  Attorney  James  B. 


14  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

Reynolds  arranged  to  make  actual  purchases  of  girls 
in  the  Tenderloin  and  other  sections  of  the  under- 
world from  those  reputed  to  be  large  dealers. 
Skilled  investigators  who  were  not  known  in  New 
York  were  engaged  and  put  to  work  in  the  heart  of 
the  Tenderloin. 

They  were  represented  as  purchasers  of  girls. 
Friendly  and  confidential  relations  were  established 
with  some  of  the  most  influential  White  Slave 
dealers.  By  these  means  valuable  first-hand  infor- 
mation was  obtained  regarding  the  White  Slave 
trade.  The  agents  were  told  the  price  of  girls,  th,e 
methods  employed  in  the  business,  and,  in  some 
cases,  the  corrupt  relations  existing  between  the 
traders  and  certain  officials. 

Past  and  present  conditions  of  the  traffic  were 
contrasted  frequently,  the  trading  during  the  present 
winter  being  described  as  exceptionally  light  because 
of  the  general  alarm  caused  by  the  sitting  of  the 
"White  Slave"  Grand  Jury.  One  large  dealer  told 
the  agents  that  though  two  years  ago  he  could  have 
sold  them  all  the  girls  they  wanted  at  $5  or  $10 
apiece,  he  would  not  risk  selling  one  in  New  York 
now  for  $1,000. 

In  spite  of  this  general  caution,  purchases  for 
cash  were  made  of  four  girls,  two  through  an  East 
Side  dealer,  who  boasted  of  formerly  having  made 
large  sales  in  other  cities,  and  two  from  a  so-called 
black  and  tan  dealer.  Two  of  the  girls  are  under  18. 

.  .  .  With  rare  exceptions,  not  only  the  inno- 
cent women  imported  into  this  Country,  but  the 
prostitutes  as  well,  are  associated  with  men  whose 
business  it  is  to  protect  them,  direct  them,  and  con- 
trol them,  and  who  frequently,  if  not  usually,  make 
it  their  business  to  plunder  them  unmercifully.  Now 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \Vhitc  Girls  15 

this  system  of  subjection  to  a  man  has  become 
common.  The  procurer  or  the  pimp  may  put  his 
woman  into  a  disorderly  house,  sharing  profits  with 
the  "madam".  He  may  sell  her  outright;  he  may 
act  as  an  agent  for  another  man;  he  may  keep  her, 
making  arrangements  for  her  hunting  men.  She 
must  walk  the  streets  and  secure  her  patrons,  to  be 
exploited,  not  for  her  own  sake,  but  for  that  of  her 
owner.  Often  he  does  not  tell  her  even  his  real 
name.  If  she  tries  to  leave  her  man,  she  is  threat- 
ened with  arrest.  If  she  resists,  she  may  be  beaten; 
in  some  cases,  when  she  has  betrayed  her  betrayer, 
she  has  been  murdered. 

The  ease  and  apparent  certainty  of  profit  has  led 
thousands  of  our  younger  men,  usually  those  of 
foreign  birth  or  the  immediate  sons  of  foreigners,  to 
abandon  the  useful  arts  of  life  to  undertake  the 
most  accursed  business  ever  devised  by  man. 

Those  who  recruit  women  for  immoral  purposes 
watch  all  places  where  young  women  are  likely  to 
be  found  under  circumstances  which  will  give  them 
a  ready  means  of  acquaintance  and  intimacy,  such 
as  picture  shows,  dance-halls,  sometimes  waiting 
rooms  in  large  department  stores,  railroad  stations, 
manicuring  and  hair  dressing  establishments. 

The  strongest  appeal  to  the  instincts  of  humanity 
in  every  right-minded  person  is  made  by  a  consider- 
ation of  the  brutal  system  employed  by  these  traf- 
fickers to  in  every  way  exploit  their  victims,  the 
hardened  prostitute  as  well  as  the  innocent  maiden. 
It  is  probable  that  a  somewhat  larger  proportion  of 
the  American  girls  are  free  from  the  control  of  a 
master;  and  yet,  according  to  the  best  evidences  ob- 
tainable— according  to  the  stories  of  the  women 
themselves  and  the  keepers  of  the  houses — nearly 
all  the  women  now  engaged  in  this  business  in  our 


16-  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

large  cities  are  subject  to  pimps,  to  whom  they  give 
most  of  their  earnings,  or  else  they  are  under  the 
domination  of  keepers  of  houses,  a  condition  that  is 
practically  the  same. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  man  who  controls  the 
women  to  provide  police  protection,  either  by 
bribing  the  police  not  to  arrest  her,  or,  in  case  of 
arrest,  to  secure  bail,  pay  the  fine,  etc.,  to  make  all 
business  arrangements,  to  decide  what  streets,  res- 
taurants, dance-halls,  saloons  and  similar  places  she 
shall  frequent. 

There  are  large  numbers  of  Jews  scattered 
throughout  the  United  States,  although  mainly  lo- 
cated in  New  York  and  Chicago,  who  seduce  and  keep 
girls.  Some  of  them  are  engaged  in  importation,  but 
apparently  they  prey  rather  upon  young  girls  whom 
they  find  on  the  street,  in  the  dance-halls,  and 
similar  places,  and  who,  by  the  methods  already 
indicated — love-making  and  pretense  of  marriage — 
they  deceive  and  ruin.  Many  of  them  are  petty 
thieves,  pickpockets  and  gamblers.  They  also  have 
various  resorts  where  they  meet  and  receive  their 
mail,  and  transact  business  with  one  another,  and 
visit.  Perhaps  the  best  known  organization  of  this 
kind  throughout  this  Country  was  one  legally  incor- 
porated in  New  York  in  1904,  under  the  name  of 
the  New  York  Benevolent  Association. 

It  is,  of  course,  difficult  to  prove  by  specific 
cases  the  relation  of  the  police  to  this  traffic,  and  to 
establish  by  specific  evidence  the  fact  generally 
accepted  that  the  girls  of  disorderly  house  keepers 
regularly  pay  the  police  for  protection;  but  high 
police  officials,  prosecuting  officers,  and  social 
workers  in  all  quarters  assert  that  in  many,  if  not 
all  of  our  large  cities,  much  corruption  of  this  kind 
exists. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \Vhitc  Girls  17 

The  importation  and  harboring  of  alien  women 
and  girls  for  immoral  purposes  and  the  practice  of 
prostitution  by  them — the  so-called  "white  slave 
traffic" — is  the  most  pitiful  and  revolting  phase  of 
the  immigration  question.  This  business  has  as- 
sumed large  proportions,  and  it  has  been  exerting 
so  evil  an  influence  upon  our  Country  that  the  Im- 
migration Commission  felt  compelled  to  make  it  the 
subject  of  a  thorough  investigation. 

The  investigation  was  begun  in  November,  1907, 
under  the  active  supervision  of  a  special  committee 
of  the  Immigration  Commission;  and  the  work  was 
conducted  by  a  special  agent  in  charge,  with  numer- 
ous assistants. 

The  investigation  has  covered  the  cities  of  New 
York,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  Seattle,  Portland, 
Salt  Lake  City,  Ogden,  Butte,  Denver,  Buffalo, 
Boston  and  New  Orleans. 

There  are  between  seven  and  eight  hundred  men 
in  Seattle  who  live  from  the  revenue  from  the 
"white  slave  traffic",  almost  all  of  whom  could  be 
reached  by  the  State  Courts,  if  proper  efforts  were 
made.  It  was  established  by  the  Grand  Jury  that 
the  Federal  Government  has  gone  as  far  as  the  law 
allows.  It  is  now  up  to  the  State  authorities,  who 
could  break  up  this  business  in  short  order. 


What  are  We  Going  to  Do  About 
the  Children? 

Levee  women,  women  living  in  prostitution, 
"madams,"  etc.,  do  not  bring  up  their  chil- 
dren (and  most  of  Chicago's  female  dealers  in 


A  Group  of  Children  in  the  Midst  of  the  "Red  Light"  District 

prostitution  have  several  of  them)  in  or  near 
segregated  districts  of  vice.  Like  the  saloon 
keeper  who  moved  to  Evanston  to  get  his  chil- 
dren away  from  the  harmful,  degenerating  influ- 
ences of  the  saloon  and  its  environing  neighbor- 
hoods, so  the  "madam,"  that  active  principal 
in  the  slavedom  of  the  girls  of  our  Land,  in 
almost  every  case  sees  to  it  that  her  children  are 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  19 

well  brought  up,  away  from  the  influences  and 
knowledge  of  prostitution,  while  her  agents  and 
keepers  are  out  scouring  the  department  stores, 
factories,  villages  and  country  homes  for  girls 
to  fill  the  sickening,  festering,  shrieking  ranks 
of  the  great  death  army  of  publicly  protected 
White  Slaves. 

The  writer  has  investigated  many  cases,  and 
in  every  instance  has  found  the  children  of  these 
vultures  of  girlhood  in  exclusive  colleges  or  mili- 
tary  schools,  being  excellently  prepared  to  take 
decent  positions  in  business  and  social  life. 
Case  after  case  has  recently  come  to  light  of 
women  supporting  their  children  on  the  fashion- 
able avenues,  in  Harvard  and  military  colleges, 
while  they  themselves  with  hearts  of  hell,  wring 
the  dollars  that  pay  for  these  luxuries  from  the 
bleeding,  broken  bodies  of  a  gang  of  Levee  White 
Slaves — your  sister  and  mine — younger  than  her 
own,  better  born,  better  raised,  but  lost  forever 
in  the  crushing,  barred  and  screened  gehenna  of 
modern  harlotry. 

Sixty-nine  per  cent  of  the  children  raised  in 
the  vast  slum  neighborhoods  surrounding  the 
segregated  districts  of  prostitution  are  ruined 
before  reaching  the  age  of  eighteen.  This 
dreadful,  appalling  feature  has  been  recently 
brought  to  light  through  close  investigation  by 
the  writer  and  her  co-workers,  together  with  the 
sickening  fact  that  little  girls  scarcely  more  than 
babies,  are  being  constantly  sought,  secured  and 
sacrificed  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  abnormal, 
degenerate  vice  and  debauchery  abounding  in 


20  Chicago 's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

every  large  city.  These  little  children,  painted 
and  showily  dressed,  are  fast  making  their 
appearance  in  such  cities  as  New  York  and  Chi- 
cago, and  they  are  the  forerunners  of  Oriental 
child  debauchery.  These  little  girls  are  seldom 
seen  on  the  streets,  but  may  be  recognized  when 
seen,  by  their  deformed,  bowed  legs,  bent  backs 
and  shrivelled  little,  old  faces — such  faces  as  we 
find  in  cripples  aged  by  pain.  Our  hearts  have 
been  almost  stilled  as  we  have  listened  to  the 
terrible  stories  of  the  hundreds  of  little  girls  in 
the  ghastly  fleshmarkets  of  India  and  China  who, 
by  the  knife  and  the  insertion  into  their  tender 
bodies  of  wedges  of  expanding  wood,  are  thus 
made  ready,  through  months  of  torture,  for  the 
use  of  some  inhuman  Hindu  or  Chinese  monster 
who  for  the  sum  of  a  few  dollars  purchases  the 
use  of  their  shrieking,  quivering  bodies,  to  leave 
them  after  a  day  or  two  of  unparalleled  debauch- 
ery, dead,  or  if  still  living,  then  with  broken 
back  or  limbs,  a  human  sacrifice  indeed. 

We  have  read  and  known  all  this  and  wished 
that  we  could  die  that  these  children  might  be 
saved — but  listen,  do  we  realize  that  with  the 
influx  into  our  midst,  into  our  larger  cities,  of 
the  vilest,  most  degenerate  men  and  women  on 
earth,  thousands  upon  thousands  of  the  most 
hellish  brutes  of  Asia  and  China — men  who 
reckon  girlhood  lower  than  the  female  dog,  has 
come  this  very  thing — this  reeking,  diabolical 
crime  against  innocent  girlhood.  Two  especially 
revolting  cases  have  come  under  the  direct 
notice  of  the  writer,  yet  without  sufficient  legal 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  21 

proof  to  face  in  court  the  organized,  thoroughly 
financed  band  of  men  and  women  exploiting 
these  dreadful  conditions:  one,  a  girl  Louise,  on 
Custom  House  Place;  the  other,  Rosie  from  the 
22nd  Street  environments.  The  last  named, 
cut,  torn  and  bleeding,  made  a  statement  to 
the  writer  that  cannot  be  put  in  print;  yet  she 
was  by  her  owners  accused  of  masturbation. 
Both  of  these  girls  were  under  ten  years  of  age. 

The  exploitation  of  women  in  Chicago  in  the 
vast  business  of  White  Slavery  and  segregated 
vice,  is  carried  on  very  openly  and  above  board. 
Street  walkers  carry  on  their  nefarious  business 
of  securing  trade  for  the  "house"  almost  entirely 
unmolested.  Women  stand  in  the  doors  of  the 
West  Side  houses  of  ill-fame  and  solicit  those 
who  pass. 

At  737  Washington  boulevard,  two  doors 
west  of  the  Chicago  Rescue  Mission,  with 
which  the  writer  is  connected,  a  woman*  stands 
in  the  door  constantly  soliciting  each  male  pas- 
ser-by; boys  are  invited  to  come  in  and  take 
their  first  lesson  in  vice,  and  on  this  block  are 
many,  many  children,  boys  and  girls.  One  of 
the  "girls"  kept  by  this  woman  was  a  harlot 
known  as  "No-nose"  whose  whole  face  was  so 
sunken  with  syphilis  that  her  nose  was  almost 
gone.  The  writer  remembers  well  when  through 
the  efforts  of  a  fellow-corker  "No-nose"  wns 
sent  to  the  County  Hospital  for  medical  treat- 
ment, and  considers  this  girl  one  of  the  greatest 


*  Through  the  effort  of  the  writer  and  the  aid  of  the  agent  of 
the  building  this  woman  was  made  to  move  a  little  further  west. 


'2'2  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  Wliitc  Girls 

menaces  to  Chicago  boyhood.     No  man  would 
have  touched  the   woman. 

The  blocks  in  this  immediate  vicinity  are  all 
thickly  peopled  by  families  with  many  children 
in  them.  The  following  group  of  little  girls 
live  in  their  alley-homes  within  a  few  doors  of 
some  of  the  worst  sights  and  dives  in  Chicago. 


Children  of   the  Slums 

They  see  no  sights  but  vice,  they  hear  no 
talk  but  filth.  At  the  age  of  ten  they  are  per- 
fectly familiar  with  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  har- 
lotry, know  many  prostitutes,  many  pimps. 

Do  you  think  these  girls  (each  one  is  known 
to  the  writer  personally)  have  any  chance  for 
virtue? 


At  804  Washington  Boulevard,  almost  across 
the  street  from  the  writer's  office,  appears  the 


23  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  Wliite  Girls 

following  sign  on  the  window  of  the  cigar  store 
located  there. 


Hundreds  of  the  wreckage  of  typical  White 
Slavery  pass  this  place  daily,  for  it  is  located 
at  the  edge  of  the  great  VVest  Side  dumping 
ground  for  broken,  diseased  women  and  young 
girls  whose  bodies  can  no  longer  be  profitably 
used  in  the  higher  class  dives  of  the  South  Side 
segregated  districts,  and  who  must  at  the  end  of 
a  year  or  two  become,  if  they  are  still  living,  the 
notorious  women  of  the  night  who  walk  the  streets 
and  alleys,  selling  the  use  of  their  vile  bodies 
for  twenty-five  cents,  ten  cents,  a  drink  of  beer 
or  a  crust  of  free  lunch,  becoming  the  prey  of 
the  drunken  bum,  the  low  vicious  foreigner,  the 
negro,  or  else  the  ruination  of  every  young  boy 
who  falls  into  their  vulture-like  clutches. 

In  all  Chicago  there  could  not  be  a  generally 
worse  neigborhood  than  the  one  in  which  the 
White  Slave  Cigar  is  manufactured  and  adver- 
tised for  sale.  Within  a  few  blocks  of  the  fac- 
tory, which  is  two  doors  west  of  the  corner  of 
Washington  Boulevard  and  Elalsted  Street,  there 
are  a  thousand  broken,  pitiful  lost  White  Slaves. 


"24  CJiicagos  Black  Traffic  in  \VJiitc  Girls 

Within  two  or  three  blocks  of  this  corner, 
five  typical  White  Slaves  have  been  murdered 
(butchered  would  be  a  better  word)  within  the 
space  of  just  a  few  weeks.  Here  drunken  wo- 
men, the  outcast  element  of  the  better  class  of 
dives,  trail  their  filthy  bodies  day  and  night, 
their  sunken,  half-starved,  syphjletic  faces 
staring  in  your  face,  seeking  the  man  or  the 
young  boy  who  will  give  them  a  drink  of  whiskey 
or  a  crust  of  bread  in  return  for  the  wretched 
commerce  they  have  to  offer.  Here,  too,  the 
children  play  and  little  girls  grow  into  big  girls 
with  scarcely  a  ghost  of  a  chance  to  be  decent, 
and  facing  all  hangs  the  sign  "White  Slave 
Cigar,"  manufactured  by  George  F.  Walz. 

It  is  out  of  this  great  outlaw  district,  this 
vast  West  Side  charnal  house  of  harlotry,  that 
the  City  gets  its  supply  of  girls  for  that  class  of 
vice  known  as  degeneracy. 

Five  years  of  work  in  prostitution  constitutes 
the  life  of  the  average  harlot.  Many,  before  the 
time  allotted  to  them  in  a  life  of  ill-fame  expires, 
die;  many  commit  suicide,  yet  some  live  on, 
their  diseased  bodies  constituting  that  class  of 
girls  known  as  street  walkers  and  degenerates. 
These  women,  who  are  really  only  young  girls, 
hang  around  the  back  rooms  and  cellars  of  the 
barrel  houses,  consorting  with  the  drunken, 
crippled,  diseased  men  who  congregate  in  such 
places,  and  from  this  vast  army  of  lost  girlhood 
is  supplied  the  material  for  the  immoral  Oriental 
shows  abounding  in  the  segregated  districts, 
where  with  dogs  and  burros,  the  bodies  of 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  25 

ruined,  diseased  girls  are  finally  used  up  and 
destroyed,  or  in  the  bestial  dives  in  which  are 
practiced  that  horrible  crime  known  as  the 
"  French  method." 

Sixty-nine  per  cent  of  the  little  girls  who 
must,  through  necessity  and  environment,  grow 
up  in  the  neighborhoods  immediately  surrounding 
the  segregated  vice  districts  of  such  cities  as 
Chicago,  New  York,  Seattle,  etc.,  are  ruined 
before  they  reach  the  age  of  eighteen  years. 
Think  of  it!  These  children  know  little  else 
than  drink  and  prostitution,  hear  little  else,  see 
little  else.  To  them  harlotry  is  in  all  its  blast- 
ing, withering  phases,  a  familiar  story  before 
they  have  reached  the  age  of  ten  years.  Hun- 
dreds of  whore  mongers,  panderers,  pimps  and 
outlawed  harlots,  exploit  their  awful  business 
and  tell  their  vile  stories  as  they  walk  the  same 
pathway  day  by  day  with  these  children — little 
lost  souls  they  are — the  children  of  the  poor, 
looked  011  in  pity  though  by  one  who  said  "In- 
asmuch as  ye  have  done  it  unto  the  least  of 
these,  ye  have  done  it  unto  Me." 

THE    TRANSIENT    HOTFL  EVIL. 

Iii  this  vast  underworld  another  trap  almost 
as  dangerous  as  the  house  of  prostitution 
abounds  on  every  hand — the  so-called  "hotel" 
really  a  mere  house  of  assignation  in  almost 
every  instance.  These  hotels  are  a  constant 
menace  to  the  girlhood  of  our  Land — girls  who 
come  to  the  city  strangers,  and  are  unable  to 
discriminate  between  the  good  and  bad.  Dozens 
of  these  hotels  flourish  all  around  the  districts 


26  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

of  vice  in  our  cities,  the  abiding  place  of  the 
pimp,  the  beggar,  the  criminal,  and  yet  flourish 
under  complete  political  protection.  We  sincerely 
believe  that  the  time  for  cleaning  up  has  come 
in  such  cities  as  New  York,  Chicago,  etc.,  and 
we  believe  that  we  have  with  us  in  this  stand, 
not  only  decent  Chicago  and  New  York,  but 
decent  America, 

CRUSADE  AGAINST  " WHITE  SLAVERY." 

Thirteen  governments  have  signed  the  inter- 
national agreement  to  fight  the  traffic  in  women 
for  immoral  purposes.  The  terms  have  just 
been  announced  at  Ottawa,  Canada. 

The  list  of  countries,  British  colonies  and 
protectorates  which  have  decided  to  adhere  to 
the  Anti- White  Slave  Traffic  Agreement  are: 
Austria-Hungary,  Belgium,  Brazil,  Denmark, 
France,  Germany,  Great  Britain,  Italy,  Norway, 
Sweden,  Portugal,  Russia,  Spain,  Switzerland, 
the  Bahamas,  Barbadoes,  British  Guiana,  Can- 
ada, Ceylon,  Australia,  Gambia,  Gold  Coast, 
Malta,  Newfoundland,  Northern' Nigeria,  South- 
ern Rhodesia,  Trinidad  and  the  Windward 
Islands. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 


27 


The  End  of  the  Way.     Where  Young  Girls,  who  attend  Public  Dance*  and 

Other  Places  of  Amusement  Unattended,  are 

Likely  to  Wind  Up 

Escape  from  a  Life  of  Prostitution 
is  Almost  Impossible 

After  more  than  four  years  of  experience, 
and  after  having  visited  in  various  capacities, 
disguised,  etc.,  many  of  the  worst  haunts  of 
vice  and  houses  of  prostitution  in  Chicago,  I 
have  personally  come  to  this  conclusion: 

There  is  but  a  small  chance  for  a  girl,  once 
having  been  sold  into  or  entered  upon  a  life  of 
prostitution,  to  ever  escape  therefrom.  Invari- 
ably she  is  kept  in  debt  to  her  masters ;  excessive 
bills  for  parlor  clothes,  board,  dentistry,  laundry 
and  all  conceivable  expenses  are  kept  charged 
up  against  her.  She  is  under  constant  threat  of 


28  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

personal  violence  and  blackmail  in  every  form 
(her  owners  securing  whenever  possible,  some 
knowledge  of  her  home  and  friends,  and  contin- 
ually holding  this  knowledge  as  a  dagger  over 
her),  and  there  is  the  ever-present  whore- 
masters  and  madams  with  drugs,  drinks  and 
bolts  and  bars,  guarding  every  avenue  of  escape 
with  blows  and  curses  arid  brutality  beyond 
conception.  Very  few  young  girls  enter  a  life 
of  prostitution  voluntarily,  and  few,  having 
once  entered.,  ever  escape  therefrom. 

A   WORD    OF   PROTEST 

The  writer  just  here  wishes  to  enter  vigorous 
protest  against  houses  of  prostitution  in  Chicago 
and  in  America  furnishing  the  American  girl  or 
her  alien  sister  for  the  use  of  that  class  of  alien 
men  who  are  either  excluded  from  citizenship  in 
our  Country  by  law,  or  who  without  wife  or 
family,  are  here  temporarily  and  simply  to  make 
all  the  money  possible,  in  as  short  a  time  and  in 
any  way  possible. 

At  2130  Armour  Avenue,  Chicago,  stands  an 
old  tenement  house  filled  with  girls — girls  from 
all  over  the  United  States — a  beautiful  ruined 
girl  from  Georgia,  girls  from  Europe.  Good 
girls  they  were  a  year  or  two  ago,  but  are  now 
the  chained,  wrecked  slaves  of  festering  vice  and 
habit.  This  place  is  said  to  be  operated  by  adope- 
fiend  by  the  name  of  W-  -  and  is  exclusively 
for  the  use  of  a  class  of  men  debarred  from  the 
United  States  by  law,  except  for  educational 
purposes  - -and  mercantile  interests  among  their 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  29 

own  kind,  a  class  of  men  with  whom  no  white 
laborer  will  live  or  work — the  class  of  men  who 
a  year  or  two  ago  murdered  Elsie  Siegel  in  New 
York — the  lop-shouldered,  smuggled-in,  pig- 
tailed  opium  parched  Chinese.  It  is  a  crying 
shame  to-day  against  our  Churches,  our  Union 
Labor  and  our  Law  that  there  is  allowed  to 
exist  on  a  public  street,  in  the  second  city  in  the 
United  States,  a  public  stock-market  for  wrecked 
girlhood  where  the  filthy  Chinese,  in  rows,  wait 
their  turn  to  rent  for  thirty  minutes  of  unparal- 
leled Asiatic  debauchery,  the  bruised,  bleeding 
wreckage  of  our  American  home  or  the  girl 
who  came  to  us  a  few  months  ago — to  the  great- 
est Christian  Republic  the  Woi  Id  has  ever  builded, 
from  some  European  home  and  a  mother,  ask- 
ing only  a  chance  to  go  to  work  with  her  bare 
hands  and  earn  a  decent  living. 

The  American  citizen  refuses  to  admit  the 
Chinaman,  refuses  to  work  with  him,  refuses 
him  all  rights  accorded  other  aliens  coming  to 
us,  and  yet,  for  the  blood  profits  of  vice  and 
politics,  allows  to  be  placed  to  his  exclusive 
privilege  that  which  a  short  time  ago  was  our 
Nation's  best  and  cleanest  womanhood. 


For  an  American  girl  entering  a  life  of  public 
prostitution  there  is  some  chance  of  salvation, 
for  the  immigrant  girl  there  is  indeed  little. 
Two  years  ago  I  had  occasion  to  visit  21— 
Armour  Avenue,  a  "50-cent  house"  in  the 
infamous  "bedbug  row  district."  It  was  about 
three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  just  before  the 


30  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

beginning  of  regular  business  hours.  In  the 
reception  room  of  the  place,  around  a  rusty  old 
stove,  sat  eight  or  ten  hopeless,  lost  girls;  sick, 
smoking,  cursing  girls.  Soon  they  would  dress 
up,  dope  up  with  whiskey,  cocaine  or  opium, 
dash  some  bella  donna  in  their  eyes  and  go 
on  duty  to  meet  all  comers.  Shivering  by  the 
stove  sat  a  little  foreign  girl.  I  asked  her  name, 
the  girls  told  me  it  was  Josie  and  that  she  was 
an  Italian.  Speaking  to  her  in  that  language, 
I  soon  learned  that  she  was  a  young  Russian 
Jewess.  The  house  seemed  to  possess  sufficient 
proof,  as  the  law  then  required,  that  the  girl  had 
been  in  this  Country  three  years ;  so  there  was 
little  I  could  do  except  give  her  my  card  and 
tell  her  if  she  ever  needed  a  friend  to  come  to 
me.  Less  than  a  year  ago  there  came  a  riug  at 
my  door,  and  opening  it,  I  found  a  lost  woman 
begging  me  to  come  at  once  into  the  West  Side 
"levee''  to  see  a  girl  who  was  dying.  I  went 
with  her,  and  there,  in  a  mouldy,  wretched 
cellar  I  found  "Josie"  of  the  Armour  Avenue 
resort,  dying  with  syphilis.  In  that  awful 
underground  place  I  listened  to  her  story  and  I 
give  it  to  you  as  she  related  it  to  me: 

"  I  am  nineteen  years  old  and  my  name  is  Gezie 
Bruvatsky.  1  saw  my  father  bayonetted  to  the  earth 
by  Russian  soldiers.  I  saw  my  mother  work  over 
the  washtub  until  her  hands  were  bloody  that  I  and 
my  little  brother  might  have  bread  and  my  virtue  be 
protected.  One  day  a  man  came  to  our  house,  who 
was  either  a  Jew  or  a  German,  saying  he  was  agent 
for  a  steamship  company  and  that  he  had  good 
work  in  America  for  many  girls  where  they  could 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  31 

earn  as  much  in  one  month  as  they  could  earn  in 
two  years  in  Russia.  My  heart  leaped  with  joy. 
How  could  we  know  he  was  lying.  I  packed  my 
clothes.  I  left  all — my  mother,  my  brother.  I 
came  to  America.  Soon  I  could  send  for  them,  for 
I  was  strong  and  could  work — work  day  and  night. 
At  New  York  a  man  and  woman  met  me  and  sent 
me  on  to  Chicago.  Here  I  was  taken  from  the  Polk 
Street  Station  to  Armour  Avenue  where  by  force' 
I  was  ruined.  I  was  there  many  months,  sick  and 
starving,  and  finally  got  out  and  crawled  over  to 
the  West  Side  where  there  are  many  Jews;  but  now 
I  am  dying  and  I  want  my  mother." 

WHAT  THE  U.   S.  PROSECUTING  ATTORNEY  SAYS: 

Hon.  Edwin  Sims,  ex-U.  S.  Prosecuting 
Attorney,  in  a  recent  conservative  statement, 
says  he  believes  that  fifteen  thousand  immigrant 
girls  are  brought  into  this  Country  every  year  for 
commercialized  prostitution. 

We  believe  the  actual  figures  are  nearer 
Twenty-five  Thousand,  and  we  appeal  to 
the  mothers  and  fathers  of  America,  in  the  name 
of  God  and  the  heart-broken  mothers  and 
fathers  of  other  lands,  to  use  their  personal  influ- 
ence and  the  money  with  which  God  has 
entrusted  them,  to  wipe  from  our  flag  the  leprous 
blotch  of  shame  which  permits  the  importing 
in' >  our  Republic  every  year  of  thousands  of 
helpless  girls  to  be  ground  up  in  the  murder 
mills  of  the  segregated  harlotry  of  such  districts 
as  the  22nd  Street  district  of  Chicago,  for  it  was 
the  blood-covered  hand  of  that  district  that 
reached  across  the  lands  and  seas  and  into  that 


32  Cliicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

Russian  home  and  tore  from  it  little  Gezie 
Bruvatsky  and  led  her  across  the  waters  and 
under  the  very  shadow  of  the  Statue  of  Liberty 
itself  and  pinning  to  her  the  little  blue  ticket  of 
immigration,  led  her  past  the  gates  of  Ellis 
Island,  on  past  the  statues  of  Washington  and 
Jefferson,  of  Lincoln  and  Grant,  and  into  the 
burning  fire  of  American  public  prostitution  to 
live  a  few  months,  and  dying  in  an  underground 
cellar,  be  cast,  scarce  cold,  into  our  nation's 
great  potter's  field  of  lost  women. 


The  Wretched,  Pitiful  Ending  of  Gezie  Bruvatsky,  left  by  Her  Hearties* 
Masters  to  Die  Unattended  in  Filthy,  Squlid  Surroundings 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  Wliite  Girls  33 

The  Price  of  a  Living  Body 

Fifty  years  ago,  down  in  the  Southland  of  our 
America,  we  stood  a  well  formed,  sound  limbed, 
healthy,  intact  young  woman  on  the  auction 
block  and  sold  her  to  the  highest  bidder  for  her 
beauty,  her  virtue,  her  heart,  her  honor,  her 
soul  and  her  body,  and  the  established  average 
price  paid  for  such  a  young  woman  was  eighteen 
hundred  dollars  ($1800.00) .  I  take  for  granted 
as  I  write,  that  if  the  heart  and  soul  and  body 
of  a  young  black  woman  of  Kentucky,  Georgia 
or  Mississippi  was  in  the  slave  market  of  fifty 
years  ago  worth  intrinsically  $1800.00,  the  soul 
and  body  of  a  clean,  decent,  young  Northland 
white  woman  is  to-day  worth  about  the  same. 
Assistant  State  Prosecuting  Attorney  Roe  in  his 
speech  before  the  Illinois  Vigilance  Society, 
Chicago,  February  7th,  1909,  placed  the  number 
of  women  in  disorderly  resorts  in  Chicago  alone 
at  30,000. 

Stop!  Listen:  If  there  are  30,000  young 
women  on  this  City's  Soul-Market,  and  we  place 
the  average  value  of  one  of  these  young  women 

at  $1,800,  AND  WE  CERTAINLY  DO  PLACE  IT  THERE, 

by  established,  recognized  precedent,  then 
there  is  $54,000,000  worth  of  young  womanhood 
in  the  Slave- Market  of  our  City  at  the  present 
time.  In  the  same  statistical  speech  Mr.  Roe 
places  the  number  of  young  girls  necessary 
yearly  to  recruit  the  rapidly  decimating  ranks  of 
this  vast  Death  Army  at  six  thousand;  hence, 
$10,800,000  worth  of  innocent  girlhood  must  be 


34  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  WJiitc  Girls 

sacrificed  from  our  stores  and  factories,  our 
homes  or  firesides  all  over  the  Land  every 
twelve  months  to  feed  and  satisfy  the  horrible 
flesh-market  of  Human  Slavery  in  the  "levee" 
districts  of  Chicago  alone. 

Harry  A.  Parkin,  Assistant  U.  S.  District 
Attorney,  in  WOMEN'S  WORLD,  March,  1909, 
says: 

"The  Federal  investigations  in  Chicago  and  other 
localities  have  clearly  established  the  fact  that, 
generally  speaking,  houses  of  ill-fame  in  large  cities 
do  not  draw  their  recruits  to  any  great  extent  from 
the  territory  immediately  surrounding  them ;  for  vari- 
ous reasons  the  White  Slavers  who  are  the  recruiting 
agents  of  this  vile  traffic  prefer  to  work  in  States 
more  or  less  distant  from  the  centers  to  which  vic- 
tims are  destined." 

In  view  of  all  this,  it  must  be  clearly  appar- 
ent that  the  need  of  the  hour  is  legislation 
which  will  make  it  as  difficult  and  dangerous  fora 
White  Slaver  to  take  his  victim  from  one  State 
into  another  as  it  is  to  bring  them  from  France, 
Italy,  Canada  or  any  other  foreign  country,  to  a 
house  of  ill-fame  in  Chicago  or  any  American 
city.  Therefore,  it  is  suggested  that  if  each 
State  in  the  Union  would  enact  and  enforce  laws 
against  this  importation,  this  terrible  traffic 
would  be  dealt  a  blow  in  its  most  vulnerable 
part. 

One  of  the  strangest  results  brought  about 
by  the  recent  White  Slave  prosecutions  in 
Chicago  and  the  wide  publicity  which  they  have 
received  has  been  the  astonishment  of  thousands 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  35 

of  persons,  as  evidenced  by  letters,  at  the  fact 
that  such  a  wholesale  traffic  is  actually  in  exist- 
ence, but  what  is  still  more  astounding,  not  to  say 
discouraging,  is  the  reluctance  of  other  thou- 
sands to  believe  that  many  hundreds  of  men 
and  women  are  actually  engaged  in  the  business 
of  luring  young  girls  and  women  to  their  destruc- 
tion and  that  this  infamous  traffic  is  being  carried 
on  in  every  state  of  the  Union  every  day  of  the 
year. 

It  is  estimated  by  those  who  should  know, 
that  at  least  five  thousand  men  in  Chicago  live 
off  of  the  earnings  of  prostitution.  For  instance  as 
to  the  plan:  A  young  girl,  alien  or  American,  is 
sold  into  a  life  of  ill-fame  for  say  Two  Hundred 
Dollars,  as  the  actual  price  of  her  procuring. 
Before  she  suspects  any  real  harm,  she  is  lured 
into  a  restaurant  or  a  wine- room,  becomes 
intoxicated,  is  sufficiently  doped  to  become 
passive,  is  taken  to  the  "house"  to  which  she 
has  been  consigned  and  is  immediately  "broken 
in"  in  the  most  violent  and  nauseating  manner, 
perhaps  becoming  the  prey  of  twenty  or  thirty  men. 
Beaten,  threatened  with  exposure,  and,  if  neces- 
sary, purposely  infected  with  gonorrhea,  the  girl 
is  within  twenty- four  hours  absolutely  ruined  for 
all  time — "spoiled,"  the  police  say.  Oh!  what  a 
whole  world  of  agony  and  pain  and  bruises  and 
disease  and  Hell  is  embodied  in  that  one  word 
"spoiled."  She  is  immediately  pressed  into  serv- 
ice and  from  that  time  on  until  death  relieves 
her,  or  she  is  rescued  by  some  one  enough  inter- 
ested to  help  her,  she  must  receive  all  comers 
THIRTY  DAYS  every  month. 


36  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

This  answers  the  question  I  have  been  asked 
a  hundred  times  from  all  over  the  Country  since 
CHICAGO'S  SOUL  MARKET  was  first  published, 
as  to  whether  a  woman  in  a  house  of  prostitution 
is  allowed  any  respite  from  service  during  the 
Menstrual  Period.  SHE  is  NOT  ALLOWED  A  SINGLE 
DAY.  The  average  number  of  men  who  must  be 
served  by  each  woman  in  a  medium  or  lower  class 
house  of  ill-fame  is  thirty-six  per  day.  On  entrance 
to  the  place,  if  the  house  be  a  "Dollar  house," 
a  metal  room-check  is  purchased  from  the 
madam  or  attendant  at  the  door  for  one  dollar. 
This  check  is  taken  up  by  the  girl  in  the  room 
and  is  worth  on  presentation  to  the  house  fifty 
cents,  half  of  its  face  value  being  received  by 
the  house  for  board,  laundry,  hair  dressing,  etc., 
all  of  which  must  be  paid  for  at  the  highest 
possible  rates.  Of  the  remaining  fifty  cents, 
twenty-five  cents  goes  to  the  man  who  sold  thegirl 
into  the  house,  the  remaining  twenty-five  cents 
going  to  the  girl  herself  and  from  this  amount 
must  be  paid  all  bills  for  clothes,  dentistry,  and 
all  other  expenses.  In  almost  every  known 
case,  however,  with  which  the  writer  is  at  all 
familiar,  the  entire  fifty  per  cent  goes  intact  to 
the  owner  of  the  girl,  her  necessary  expenses 
being  paid  by  him  and  the  balance  pocketed  for 
his  own  use. 

Just  as  the  liquor  trade  is  thoroughly  and 
carefully  financed  and  organized  even  in  its 
weakest  points,  making  successful  prosecution 
against  it  a  thing  impossible,  just  so  is  the  traf- 
fic in  young  women  protected  in  all  its  details. 
The  writer  has  in  mind  the  case  of  Josie  E , 


Chicago's  Black   Traffic  in  \\ltitc  Girls  37 

fifteen  years  old,  who  came  from  her  suburban 
home  in  Illinois,  hoping  to  secure  employment 
in  the  City.  Arriving  at  the  Dearborn  Street 
Railway  Station  about  nine  o'clock,  she  started 
out  to  find  a  hotel  in  which  to  spend  the  night. 
Walking  a  few  steps  from  the  Station,  she  was 
accosted  at  State  and  Polk  streets  by  a  young 
man  who  asked  her  what  she  was  looking  for. 
Replying  that  she  was  looking  for  a  hotel,  the 
man  Thompson  told  her  he  was  employed  at  a 
hotel  on  Polk  Street  opposite  the  railway  station 
and  offered  to  take  the  girl  there.  Unacquainted 
with  the  City  and  relying  on  his  word,  she 
accompanied  him  to  the  hotel,  where  she  was 
outraged  and  detained  for  weeks.  She  was 
finally  rescued  by  the  writer  and  a  Y.  W.  C.  A. 
worker.  Taking  her  to  my  rooms,  I  found  her 
physical  condition  such  that  I  sent  for  a  detec- 
tive from  the  Harrison  Street  Police  Station  who 
investigated  her  story  and  finding  it  true  in  every 
particular,  arrested  Thompson  at  his  place  of 
employment,  41  Polk  Street.  The  case  coming 
up  in  the  Harrison  Street  Municipal  Court,  was 
so  manipulated  by  the  defense  that  in  the  trans- 
ferring of  it  to  the  Criminal  Court  a  technical 
error  threw  it  out  altogether.  I  simply  give  this 
as  an  example  of  how  almost  utterly  impossible 
it  is  to  secure  a  conviction  in  these  cases.  Is  it 
any  wonder  when  back  of  this  great  evil  stands 
at  least  a  hundred  million  dollars? 

Listen,  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  women 
and  girls  entering  lives  of  ill-fame  in  Chicago 
are  from  adjoining  States  and  country  districts — 
they  are  utter  strangers  in  our  City.  Every 


38  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

hour,  day  or  night,  year  in  and  year  out,  four 
great  central  railway  passenger  stations  discharge 
their  precious  human  freight  within  the  first 
ward  of  Chicago,  the  richest  and  wickedest 
political  ward  in  the  world — the  ward  of  Michael 
Kenna  (Hinky  Dink)  and  "Bathhouse"  John 
Coughlin — the  ward  feeding  every  district  of 
prostitution  and  gambling  and  unnatural  horror 
in  the  City — the  ward  with  two  miles  of  indecent 
resorts,  whole  armies  of  reeking  lost  women, 
hundreds  of  pandering  men  procurers  and  White 
Slavers — the  ward  of  thousands  of  Turkish, 
Italian  and  Arabian  immigrants,  and  opium- 
parched  pagan  Chinese — the  ward  in  which 
every  day  thousands  of  women,  many  of  whom 
without  money  or  friends,  are  looking  for  work, 
are  unloaded  in  this  seething  cauldron  of  vice, 
their  only  refuge  being,  when  without  funds,  the 
Police  Station  or  the  house  of  ill-repute. 

The  horror  of  conditions  surrounding  a  woman 
without  money  or  friends  in  Chicago  makes  the 
living  of  a  moral  life  almost  impossible  for  her. 
1  have  in  mind  the  case  of  a  deserted  little 

Italian    woman,   G.    P ,  living  in  Plymouth 

Court,  south  of  Polk  Street.  G.  had  three  little 
baby  girls,  the  eldest  only  four  years,  and  was 
expecting  another  child  soon.  She  was  deserted 
by  her  husband  and  left  without  a  dollar  or  a 
friend  to  face  life  and  care  for  herself  and 
babies.  The  case  came  into  the  hands  of  the 
Mission  and  she  was  cared  for  by  them  until  the 


N.B. — G.  P.'s  is  strictly  authentic.  The  Chicago  Rescue 
Mission  will  give  you  details  and  take  charge  of  any  help  you  may 
care  to  give  her. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  30 

time  of  her  confinement,  when,  with  her  chil- 
dren, she  was  taken  to  Dunning  Poorhouse 
where  she  was  kindly  cared  for.  A  baby  boy 
was  born  to  G.  Great  pressure  was  brought  to 
bear  upon  this  little  Italian  mother  who  spoke 
no  word  of  English,  to  induce  her  to  give  up  her 
children.  Frightened  and  weeping,  she  refused 
to  do  this,  declaring  she  would  make  a  living  for 
them,  and  leaving  the  Poorhouse,  she  started  out 
taking  the  baby  and  another  child  with  her, 
hoping  soon  to  earn  the  money  to  care  for  the 
other  two. 

This  she  was  fortunate  enough  to  accom- 
plish, and,  taking  the  four  little  ones  dear  to 
her  heart,  went  back  to  the  little  room  on  the 
top  floor  of  the  tenement  in  Plymouth  Court. 
G.  got  work  in  a  sweatshop  and  made  button- 
holes at  $2.50  a  week.  She  worked  hard  to  keep 
up,  but  the  baby  sickened  and  died.  The  other 
children  began  to  get  thin  and  wan.  They  grew 
hungry  before  her  eyes  and  the  mother's  heart 
frightened  and  sank  within  her.  A  fiend  in 

human  form,  J.  F ,  came  by  and  offered  the 

half-starved  mother  bread  for  herself  and  babies, 
offered  her  marriage  as  soon  as  it  could  be 
arranged  for.  G.  took  the  bread  and  fed  her 
children  and  to-day  up  on  the  top  floor  of  the 
tenement  in  Plymouth  Court,  again  deserted  and 
hungry  and  helpless,  she  cr,ies  and  prays  and 
makes  button-holes,  and  waits  and  waits  with 
fear  and  wretchedness  the  coming  of  another 
little  child. 

The  proprietor  of  the  great  resort  on  the 
<'3rner  of  21st  and  Dearborn  streets  said  not 


40  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \\liitc  Girls 


From  a  flashlight  photograph  showing  2-ton  weight 

steel  door  connecting  sound-proof  dungeon  cell 

with   blind    passage-way,    between    114 

and  116  Custom  House  Place 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  41 

long  ago  to  a  co-worker  of  mine  who  forced  her 
way  into  his  infamous  dive: 

"Don't  come  here  to  bother  my  girls;  it  is  of  no 

use;  they  are  rotten  and  ripe  for  H .  Soon  I  will 

throw  them  out  myself.  Goto  the  department  stores 
and  the  sweatshops  and  help  the  underpaid,  friend- 
less girl  there  if  you  must  work.  I  could  write  a 
book  as  large  as  that  (pointing  to  the  City  Direc- 
tory) rilled  with  shrieks  and  groans  of  women  after 
they  are  lost,  but  what  good  would  it  do?  They  are 
gone  then  forever :" 

In  a  great  measure,  the  man  told  the  truth. 
It  is  hard  to  reach  a  woman  after  she  has  once 
entered  a  life  of  prostitution ;  for,  like  the  Infer- 
no of  old,  there  should  be  emblazoned  in  letters 
of  blood  above  the  barred  door  of  every  White 
Slave  mart  in  America,  the  ancient  warning: 

"Leave  hope  behind,  all  ye  who  enter  here." 

There's  many  a  girl  homeless  and  tempted, 
underpaid  and  destitute,  who  might  be  saved 
from  a  life  of  ill-fame  if  a  helping  hand  and  a 
shelter  were  offered  her  in  her  hour  of  indecision 
and  hunger  arid  despair. 

In  the  south  wall  of  the  basement  of  114 
Federal  Street,  formerly  known  as  Custom  House 
Place,  that  congested,  central  Redlight  District 
of  three  years  ago,  there  was  a  blind  passage- way 
between  114  and  116  Custom  House  Place,  116 
being  the  notorious  dive  "The  California"  now 
located  at Armour  Avenue.  On  the  in- 
side, this  door  opened  into  a  large  dungeon, 
windowless,  sound-proof  (about  7x10  feet)  and 
it  is  alleged  that  it  was  through  the  alley  and 


42 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  WJiite  Girls 


From   a  flashlight  photograph   showing  heavy  steel 

screen  used  inside  the  iron-barred  windows 

of  the  houses  of  prostitution  in  the 

old  Custom  House  district 


.  .-  .      Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  ..  43 

into  this  blind  passage- way  that  the  unwilling 
victims  of  White  Slavers  (the  same  syndicate 
now  operating  with  Chicago  as  headquarters) 
were  carried  into  this  little  solitary  cell  to  be 
"broken  in"  by  fiendish,  brute  force  to  a  life  of 
shame. 

The  accompanying  photograph  secured  by  the 
writer  gives  at  least  a  faint  idea  of  this  frightful 
trap  against  the  pitiless  walls  of  which  have,  no 
doubt,  beat  the  agonized  shrieks  of  many  an 
innocent  girl — your  sister  and  mine — as,  bap- 
tising this  hell-hole  with  blood  and  tears,  her 
quivering  body  was  crucified  upon  a  whore- 
monger's cross  of  gold  and  then  torn  down  to  be 
cast,  bruised,  bleeding,  but  yet  alive,  into  five 
years  of  the  awful,  seething  moral  Golgotha  of 
prostitution  and  then  into  lingering1  death. 

The  Chicago  Rescue  Mission  and  Woman's 
Shelter  of  which  the  writer  is  President,  has  for 
two  years  occupied  the  premises  at  114  Custom 
House  Place.  Upon  moving  into  the  place  we 
found  every  window  incased  in  heavy  iron  bars 
while  between  the  bars  and  the  glass  of  each 
window  was  mortised  a  one-half  inch  steel  screen 
(see  cut).  Entrance  or  exit  from  the  building 
was  as  utterly  impossible  as  from  a  penitentiary, 
excepting  by  the  front  door,  and  to  bring  the 
place  within  the  requirements  of  the  City  law  it 
was  necessary  to  bring  a  suit  through  the  Munic- 
ipal Court  against  the  owner  of  the  building, 
Mrs.  Spiegel,  against  whom  through  the  aid  of 
Assistant  Prosecuting  Attorney  Oleson,  we  ob- 
tained a  verdict  and  forced  her  thereon  to  put 
in  a  rear  stairway  (see  Court  records). 


44  Chicago  s  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

114  Custom  House  Place  is  only  one  of  the 
fifty  similarly  notorious  dens  in  the  old  Redlight 
district,  and  yet  it  is  impossible  to  make  some 
people  believe  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
forcible  detention  of  a  woman  in  a  Chicago  house 
of  prostitution. 

FKOM  THE  "WOMAN'S  WORLD" 
I  quote  the  following  incident  cited  by  Assist- 
ant Prosecuting  Attorney  Roe  in  an  article  of 
recent  date  in  WOMAN'S  WORLD,  illustrating 
some  of  the  schemes  and  plans  for  leading  a 
girl  into  a  life  of  ill- fa  me.  Mr.  Roe  says: 

"A  year  ago  last  summer,  15-year  old  Margaret 
Smith  was  working  about  her  simple  home  near 
Benton  Harbor,  Michigan.  The  father,  employed 
by  the  Pere  Marquette  Railroad,  was  away  from 
home  a  good  share  of  the  time.  One  day  a  grapho- 
phone  agent  came  to  the  house  and  the  family  be- 
came interested  in  one  of  his  musical  machines. 
Shortly  afterward  this  agent  brought  with  him  to 
the  Smith  home  Frank  Kelly,  and  introduced  him 
to  Maggie,  as  she  was  called  by  her  folks.  In  a  day 
or  two  Margaret  was  on  her  way  to  Chicago  with 
Kelly  who  promised  her  an  excellent  position  in  the 
City.  Upon  her  arrival  Margaret  was  sold  to  one 
of  the  worst  dives  in  Chicago,  located  on  South 
Clark  Street  and  owned  by  an  Italian  named  Baptista 
Pizza.  Here  she  learned  that  her  captor's  name  was 
not  Frank  Kelly,  but  an  Italian  whose  real  name  is 
Alphonso  Citro.  For  a  year  she  was  kept  as  a 
Slave  in  this  resort,  which  was  over  a  saloon,  and 
the  entrance  was  through  a  back  alley.  The  only 
visitors  were  Italians,  who  came  for  immoral  pur- 
poses. Learning  last  summer  that  Margaret's  father, 
who  had  been  hunting  relentlessly  for  his  daughter, 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  45 

was  on  the  track  of  her,  the  girl  was  taken  by 
Alphonso  Citro,  alias  Kelly,  to  Gary,  Indiana. 
When  the  father  came  to  the  resort  with  a  police- 
man, he  found  that  his  daughter  had  gone.  She  was 
kept  in  Gary  about  two  months  and  then  returned 
to  this  disreputable  place  from  which  she  escaped 
finally,  the  Monday  before  last  Christmas.  A  young 
barber  took  pity  on  her  after  hearing  her  story,  and 
enlisted  the  sympathies  of  his  parents  who  took  her 
to  their  home.  Alphonso  Citro  (Kelly)  looked  for 
her  almost  a  week,  and  at  last  saw  her  going  from  a 
store  to  this  home,  where  she  was  staying.  He 
went  to  the  house  and  demanded  at  the  point  of  a 
revolver  that  she  be  given  up,  as  he  said: 

"I  am  losing  money  every  day  she  is  gone." 

"There  was  a  quarrel  over  the  girl  during  which 
some  people  from  the  outside  were  attracted  to  the 
house  by  the  commotion.  Citro,  becoming  fright- 
ened, fled  down  the  street,  and  as  he  ran,  threw 
away  the  revolver  with  which  he  had  tried  to  shoot 
the  father  of  the  barber  during  the  quarrel,  over  the 
fence  into  a  coal  yard.  After  running  two  blocks, 
he  was  caught  and  arrested.  Upon  these  facts  this 
procurer,  Citro,  alias  Kelly,  was  prosecuted  and  found 
guilty  under  the  new  pandering  law  of  Illinois,  and 
received  a  sentence  of  one  year  of  imprisonment 
and  a  fine  of  five  hundred  dollars.  The  poor  father 
and  mother,  distressed  and  heart-broken,  were  in 
Court  during  the  trial  with  their  arms  around  each 
other,  sobbing  with  joy  because  their  little  girl  had 
been  found.  Pizza,  the  owner  of  the  place,  was 
indicted  by  the  State  grand  jury,  but  escaped  to 
Italy.  This  case  is  told  to  show  how  girls  leave 
home  upon  the  promise  of  securing  employment  and 
are  in  this  way  procured  for  places  of  ill-repute." 

NOTE. — Baptista  Pizza,  it  was  discovered,  did  not  go  to  Italy, 
but  after  a  few  months  of  hiding,  again  engaged  in  his  nefarious 
business.  He  was  recently  arrested  for  selling  an  American  girl, 
fined  $1000.00  and  sentenced  to  two  years  in  the  House  of 
Correction. 


46  .         ^Chicago 's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls.. 


Chicago's  Soul   Market. 

' 
"O,  he  keeps  a, bunch  of  'fillies'  in  a  shanty  down 

near  the  corner,  of  Monroe  and  Peoria  streets,  and 
they're  not  foreigners,  either.  They're  American 
girls!  No  wonder  he  can  make  a  bet  like  that  on  a 

mere  chance,  from  a  roll  of  vellow  backs." 
/•it      ^;:       H  ..-.-., 

The  ^speaker  was  the  madam  of  ,a  Peoria 
street  resort,  the  listeners,  a  motley  crowd  of 
women  gathered  in  the  rear  of  a  popular  saloon 
and  gambling  house  not  far  from  the  corner  of 
Green  and  Madison  streets,  on  the  seething,  con- 
gested West  Side  of  Chicago.  These  women  had 
assembled  in  that  screened  back  room  to  risk 
their  hard  earned  or  evil-gotten  money  on  the 
horses  of  the  Louisville  race  track. 

There  sat  a  little  18-year  old,  brown-eyed 
milliner,  her  dissipated  face  hollow  and  drawn 
from  worry  and  lack  of  sleep  and  an  insufficient 
quantity  of  nourishing  food,  while  near  her  a 
white-haired  old  lady  in  shabby  black  was 
tightly  grasping  two  quarters,  her  entire  worldly 
possession.  Just  across  sat  a  well-dressed 
woman  restaurant  keeper,  a  young  eastern  star 
and  half  a  hundred  others,  above  all  of 
whom  shone  the  yellow  haired  madam  of  the 
Peoria  Street  resort,  the  star  patron  of  that  great 
gambling  room  for  women,  each  one  of  whom 
was  eagerly  beckoning  the  well-groomed  book- 
maker, feverishly  anxious  to  get  her  pittance  on 
the  race-track  favorite,  when  a  connecting 
door  was  pushed  suddenly  open  and  in  rushed  a 
fashionably  dressed,  brutal-faced  young  Russian 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \  \  'kite  Girls  47 

Jew,  holding  loosely  an  immense  roll  of  money. 
Tens,  twenties,  hundreds— he  counted  them 
until  three  hundred  dollars  had  been  placed  to 
win  upon  a  "clocker  tip"  in  that  day's  last  race 
in  Louisville. 

There  was  grim,  deadly  silence — eating,  un- 
bearable silence  in  that  gambling  room  as  they 
waited  the  ring  of  the  telephone  and  the  name 
of  the  winner.  Again  the  yellow  haired  ma- 
dam's voice  screamed  shrilly  out,  for  she  was 
indeed  ill  at  ease,  her  money  was  all  on  the 
favorite — "Yes,  a  bunch  of  American  'fillies' 
peddled  put;  at  50  cents  an  hour  to  all  comers, 
black  or  white,  sick  or  sound.  I^o  wonder. Jtje 
can  make  a  play  like  that  on  an  outside 

r       J  -•;'(/  , .  .1    •   v 

chance."    ,  .       ,  >, 

Three-hundred  dollafs!  '-'Mty  heart  stood  still 
almost.  The  thought  flashed  through  my  brain 
that  that  wager  meant  hundreds  of  hours  of 
shame  arid  slavery  and  horror  to  those  girls  in 
the  shanties  down  on  Peoria  street,  some 
mother's  girl,  every  one  of  them.  I  sat  still  for 
a  little  while  and  watched  the  feverish  anxious 
throng  about  me.  My  heart  kept  going  faster  and 
faster  until  I  could  bear  it  no  longer.  Ameri- 
can "fillies"  and  body  and  soul  under  a  brutal 
Russian  whore-monger!  I  slipped  quietly  out 
into  the  street;  night  was  coming  on,  and  I 
walked  down  Madison  and  south  on  Peoria. 
Yes,  there  were  the  shanties — poor,  wretched 
hovels,  every  one  of  them.  Out  shone  the  flick- 
ering red  lights,  out  came  the  discordant,  rasp- 
ing sound  of  the  rented  piano,  out  belched  the 


48  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

shrieks  and  groans  of  drunken  harlots  mingled 
with  the  curses  of  task-masters  in  a  foreign 
tongue,  attracting  the  attention  of  the  hundreds 
of  laborers,  negroes  and  boys,  as  they  walked 
home  on  Peoria  street  from  their  day's  work. 
On  I  went  until  I  came  to  a  little  shed  just  north 
of  th.3  slum  saloon  occupied  by  one  Shellstadt 
at  the  corner  of  Monroe  and  Peoria  streets,  and 
checking  my  steps,  I  loak^d  around  me  on  the 
squalid,  wretched  scene.  I  was  in  the  midst  of 
prostitution  at  its  lowest — the  heart- breaking 
dregs  of  Chicago's  thirty  thousand  public 
women.  Yes,  there  they  were — the  fair  young 
American  girl,  the  stolid  Russian  Jewess,  the 
middle-aged,  syphiletic  harlot,  living,  prosti- 
tuting, dying  like  so  many  hurt,  broken  moths 
around  that  great  red-light — Chicago's  West 
Side  Soul  Market — their  poor,  wrecked,  foul 
smelling  bodies  sold  day  and  night  at  from 
twenty-five  to  fifty  cents  an  hour  to  all  comers 
who  could  pay  the  pitiful  price  demanded  by 
their  brutal,  soulless  masters;  and,  as  I  looked, 
the  burning  fire  of  intense  pity  entered  my  soul 
for  these  drug  and  drink-sodden,  diseased  and 
chained  slaves — my  sisters  in  Christ  and  this 
great,  free  American  Republic,  and  so,  with  a 
heart-consuming  desire  to  know  more  of  the 
lives  of  these  scarlet  women  and  to  help  them,  if 
possible,  I  began  at  once  a  thorough  personal 
investigation  of  Chicago's  public  Slave  Market, 
visiting  these  people  whenever  occasion  offered ; 
talking  with  them,  gaining  their  much  abused 
confidence,  until  I  gradually  learned  the  inside 
lines  of  the  saddest  story  America  has  ever 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  49 

known-  since  the  black  mothers  of  our 
Southland  were  torn  from  their  black  and  white 
babies  and  with  shrieks  of  agony  and  heart 
strings  bleeding  and  soul  rent  with  blackened 
horror  were  sold  to  death  on  the  plantations  of 
Louisiana  and  Mississippi,  and  I  want  to  tell 
you  who  read  this  and  who  think  there  is  little 
truth  in  the  now  much  agitated  question  of 
White  Slavery  in  America,  that  in  the  dives  and 
dens  of  our  City's  underworld  I  have  heard 
shrieks  and  heart  cries  and  groans  of  agony  and 
remorse  that  have  never  been  surpassed  at  any 
public  slave  auction  America  has  ever  witnessed, 
as  these  girls,  many  of  them,  oh!  so  young, 
realizing  their  awful  fate,  with  scalding  tears 
and  moans  of  horror,  shut  out  from  their  hearts 
and  lives  father  or  mother  or  husband  and  child, 
and  turned  their  sob-shaken,  tortured  bodies  to 
face  the  years  of  final,  relentless  wretchedness 
and  woe,  to  be  at  last  thrown  out  sick  and 
broken,  to  die  in  some  alley  or  to  be  carted  off 
to  Dunning  poorhouse  to  gradual  physical  decay 
and  a  pauper's  burial  and  grave  of  obliteration, 
while  those  who  sold  them  just  a  few  years 
before  go  out  in  their  diamonds  and  fine  linen 
and  their  great  automobiles  to  buy  up  more  girls 
(it  might  be  your  daughter,  father,  mother;  or 
it  might  be  mine)  to  fill  the  vacancy  in  the  ranks 
of  this  vast  army  of  White  Slaves. 

A  woman  said  to  me  the  other  day,  and  it 
was  in  a  lofty,  sneering  tone,  too:  "I  doubt  if 
these  women  are  ever  coerced  or  even  imposed 
upon." 


50  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

LISTEN;  READ,  THEN  LISTEN. 

Sitting  in  my  office  one  afternoon  I  listened, 
my  blood  almost  freezing,  to  the  following  story 
vouched  for  by  Mr.  C ,  an  immigration  in- 
spector and  brother  of  a  well-known  Chicago 
reform  worker.  Here  it  is  as  he  told  it  to  me: 

"One  evening  some  time  ago  I  was  looking  up  a 
case  down  in  the  Twenty-Second  Street  red-light 
district,  and  visited  and  inspected,  looking  for  im- 
migrant girls  held  illegally,  a  certain  house  of  the 
lower  class  in  that  neighborhood  of  prostitution. 
While  in  the  house  I  noticed  a  young  woman  lying 
very  ill  (in  the  last  stages  of  pneumonia,  if  I  remem- 
ber the  story  exactly)  and  in  a  semi-conscious  con- 
dition, and  to  my  horror  upon  inquiry  I  learned  that 
in  the  rush  hours  of  business  this  helpless,  pain- 
racked  young  woman  was  open  to  all  comers  holding 
an  accredited  room  check." 

Dear  friends,  there  are  true  stories  heard  and 
known  every  day  around  the  City's  seething, 
blood-red  Soul  Market  that  cannot  be  put  into 
print — stories,  though,  that  were  they  to  be- 
come known,  would  make  decent  Chicago  rise  as 
one  man  and  cry  with  a  voice  outspeaking  Fort 
Sumter,  "White  Slavery  in  Chicago  and  in 
America  must  cease ! ' ' 

During  my  years  of  study  of  this  question  of 
prostitution  I  learned  to  know  personally  many 
of  the  characteristic  White  Slaves  of  the  West 
and  South  Side  "levees,"  One  "Alice"  I  shall 
never,  never  forget.  Beautiful  aside  from  her 
dissipation,  a  high  school  graduate,  grammar 
and  syntax  perfect,  manner  exquisite.  "Alice," 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  51 

seduced  at  eighteen,  was  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one  away  down  the  line  in  the  West  Side  levee 
underworld.  I  used  to  talk  many  times  with 
Alice  as  she  sat  in  the  back  parlor  of  the 
4 'house"  on  Peoria  street  that  gave  her  shelter, 
awaiting  her  call  of  "next"  to  go  up  stairs  with 
whosoever — negro,  white  or  Chinese — might  buy 
for  one  dollar  (one  of  the  dollars  of  the  Republic 
on  which  is  eternally  stamped  the  blessed  words, 
"In  God  we  Trust")  possession  of  her  beautiful 
body  for  one  hour.  Smoking,  always  smoking 
her  doped  Turkish  cigarette,  Alice  told  me 
much  of  her  life,  both  in  years  gone  forever 
and  of  a  daily  "levee"  existence.  She  told  me 
of  a  father  and  mother  and  a  beautiful  home,  of 
a  lover  who  came  into  it  and  led  her  away  by 
night  into  "levee"  Slavery — of  the  awful  dis- 
grace and  disinheritance,  of  a  little  baby  that 
she  only  knew  an  hour,  of  insane  remorse  and 
anguish,  until  at  last  she  would  stand  and  scream 
and  scream  with  mental  pain  until  some  whore- 
monger knocked  her  senseless,  and  then 
how  she  would  crawl  away  to  some  near-by 
shanty  saloon  and  drink  herself  helpless,  to 
forget. 

As   far   as  I    know  Alice  is  still  on  Peoria 

street,     and,    oh!    men  and  women,  there  are 

thirty  thousand  of  these  Alices  in  Chicago's 
great  blasting  Soul  Market  to-day. 

United  States  Attorney  Sims  puts  the  aver- 
age life  of  a  prostitute  at  ten  years  or  less, 
while  other  excellent  authorities  put  it  as  low  as 
five  years,  as  these  women  must  constantly  drink 


52  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

any  and  all  drinks  purchased  for  them  by 
visitors  (as  much  of  the  business  revenue  is 
derived  from  the  sale  of  these  drinks),  thus 
forcing  them  at  all  times  into  a  half-drunken 
condition,  rendering  them  helpless  to  control  the 
abnormal,  sickening,  mind  and  body  wrecking 
demands  made  upon  them  by  the  gonorrheal, 
syphilitic,  sodden  wretches  of  whom  not  one  in 
ten  is  capable  of  normal  sexual  coalition,  yet 
whose  debauched,  drunken  desires  and  require- 
ments, no  matter  how  unnatural  and  revolting, 
must  be  satisfied  by  the  use  of  the  bodies  of 
their  hopeless  victims  at  fifty  or  even  as  low  as 
twenty-five  cents  an  hour. 

Very  few  young  women  entering  this  cess- 
pool of  prostitution  are  able  to  live  therein  an 
average  of  eight  weeks  without  becoming 
infected  with  one  or  more  of  the  loathsome 
diseases  of  the  underworld,  and  thus  ruined  and 
horrible  they  live  on  and  on  for  three,  four  or 
six  years,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  thirty 
thousand  pure  young  girls,  gathered  from 
prairie  homes  and  village  firesides  and  from  out 
of  our  own  suburban  and  city  families,  must 
march  out  into  this  great  Soul  Market  to  take 
the  place  of  the  broken  wretches  whose  decaying 
bodies  are  cast  into  the  refuse  of  our  alleys  and 
sewers  to  become  the  menace  of  every  girl  and 
boy  and  drunken  man  who  comes  within  their 
clutches  or  sets  foot  within  their  alley  hovels. 

THE    END    OF    THE   WAY. 

At  about  ten  o'clock  on  Saturday  evening, 
September  19th,  I  boarded  a  West  Madison 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  53 

street  car  and,  transferring  north  at  Halsted 
street,  alighted  at  Lake  and  walked  west  to 
Lewinsky's  saloon  at  the  corner  of  Lake  and 
Green  streets.  Going  around  to  the  side  entrance 
on  Green  street,  I  discovered  in  the  wine  and 
back  rooms  of  the  wretched  place  a  crowd  of 
perhaps  fifty  drunken,  dirty,  diseased  men  and 
women,  most  of  them  foul-smelling,  young  white 
girls  huddled  in  with  the  worst  mob  of  negroes, 
whites  and  Chinese  I  have  seen  in  Chicago's 
slums,  all  cursing,  drinking,  singing  and  blas- 
pheming in  plain  view  and  hearing  of  the  street. 
I  stopped  a  moment  to  make  sure  I  was  making 
no  mistake  in  what  I  saw  and  then  crossed  the 
street  to  interview  the  dark-eyed  little  foreign 
girl  who  at  its  door  was  boldly  soliciting  trade 
for  the  saloon  and  its  adjacent  evils,  just 
opposite. 

I  walked  on  down  toPeoria  and  south  on  that 
notorious  street. 

In  the  row  of  houses  running  from  Lake  to 
Randolph  street  there  are  approximately  six 
hundred  White  Slaves,  arid  diseased,  crippled 
prostitutes  of  the  lowest  class,  dumped  from  the 
city's  cleaner  dives,  and  on  that  night  it  was 
almost  impossible  to  push  one's  way  through 
the  mass  of  men  and  boys — whites,  negroes, 
Turks,  Polocks,  etc.,  gathered  in  front  of  these 
places  of  public  abomination.  At  the  corner  of 
Randolph  and  Peoria  streets  several  earnest  men 
and  women  were  holding  a  little  gospel  meeting, 
and,  stopping  with  them,  I  counted  during  the 
thirty  minutes  I  stayed  there  six  hundred  and 


54  .Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

forty    (approximately)    men    and    boys  stop  in 
front  of  or  enter  this  horrible  flesh  market. 

As  I  left  the  scene,  a  young  girl  in  a  drunken, 
filthy,  diseased  condition  slipped  out  of  an  alley 
and  followed  me,  asking  me  to  help  her,  and  as 
we  sat  on  the  steps  of  Saints  Peter  and  Paul 
Cathedral,  corner  of  Washington  boulevard  arid 
Peoria  street,  she  told  me  the  worst,  most  heart- 
breaking story  of  wrong  and  vice  and  ruin  I 
have  ever  listened  to  (see  note.)* 

As  I  left  that  West  Side  levee  of  vice  I  knew 
I  had  seen  prostitution  at  its  lowest  ebb  and  that 
from  these  holes  of  horror  finally  went  those 
awful  alley  women  of  the  night  to  sell  their 
soul  and  trail  their  black  disease  to  any  young 
boy  or  drunken  man  who  could  give  them  a  few 
cents  or  even  the  price  of  a  drink  of  whiskey. 

Coming  down  Custom  House  Place  one  night 
about  10:30  o'clock  I  overtook,  without  their 
knowledge,  six  boys,  ranging  from  about  twelve 
down  to  perhaps  seven  years,  three  of  whom  I 
knew  fairly  well.  Following  them  from  shadow 
to  shadow,  I  gathered  sufficient  of  their  low- 
voiced  conversation  to  make  me  certain  they  had 
been  holding  an  orgy  in  a  nearby  cellar  or  base- 
ment with  a  drunken  harlot,  and  that  together 
they  had  paid  her  the  small  sum  of  seventeen 
cents  for  this  damning,  soul-destroying  com- 
merce. One  boy,  a  lad  of  about  nine  years,  had 


*This  girl  was  turned  over  to  the  Chicago  Rescue  Mission, 
cleaned  and  clothed  and  fed  and  pointed  to  Jesus  Christ.  Her  story 
was  investigated  and  found  true  and  after  receiving  medical  atten- 
tion she  was  quietly  returned  to  her  country  home. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  55 

been  wheedled  by  his  companions  into  paying  ten 
cents  of  this  sum  and  was  arguing  for  the  return 
of  at  least  a  part  of  his  money,  because  of  the  age 
and  helplessness  of  the  woman  and  the  extreme 
short  time  allowed  him  by  his  companions  in 
his  relations  with  her. 


Mr.  J.  J.  Sloan,  when  he  was  superintendent 
of  the  John  Worthy  School,  which  is  the  local 
juvenile  municipal  reformatory,  reported  that 
one-third  of  the  street  boys  sent  to  him  were 
suffering  from  the  loathsome  diseases  and  dis- 
tempers of  the  red-light  district,  nor  is  this  to 
be  wondered  at  when  we  consider  the  fact  that 
sexual  commerce  may  be  purchased  almost  any- 
where in  South  State  street  and  in  the  West 
Side  alleys  for  the  remarkably  low  price  of  ten 
cents,  or  even  a  glass  of  beer  or  whiskey,  from 
the  gonorrheal,  syphilitic  denizens  thrown  out 
long  ago  from  the  better  class  houses  of  prosti- 
tution to  live  off  of  the  half-drunken  men  and  boys 
to  be  found  in  swarms  along  South  State,  Hal- 
sted  and  South  Clark  streets. 

Almost  invariably,  the  street  boy  haunting 
these  underworld  sections  of  our  city  is  first  led 
into  sexual  sin  by  one  of  the  crippled,  half- rotten, 
yet  painted  vampires  of  the  streets  whose  only 
care  or  hope  is  a  crust  of  free  lunch  and  enough 
whiskey  or  "dope' '  to  drown  for  a  time  at  least  the 
last  throb  of  heart  arid  conscience  and  keep  life  a 
little  longer  in  the  wretched  body,  and  the  boy 
having  purchased  for  a  small  fee  his  own  de- 
struction trails  out  again  into  the  night  and  on 


56  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

into  disease  and  crime  and  prison,  and  finally 
death. 

The  average  parent  of  to-day  has  little  idea 
of  the  temptations  which  constantly  surround 
and  beset  the  growing  boy.  I  recall  a  case  in 
Des  Moines,  Iowa,  where  a  little  degenerate  girl 
of  sixteen  caused  the  moral ,  and  in  several  cases 
physical,  ruin  of  five  young  boys,  all  this  hap- 
pening in  an  exclusive  East  Side  neighborhood 
and  under  the  watchful  care  of  hone.st  parents 
and  friends,  so  what  must  be  the  temptation 
thrown  out  to  the  young  boys  of  our  city  when 
through  block  after  block  of  our  central  dis- 
tricts they  must  come  in  contact  with  those 
whose  only  mission  is  to  ruin  and  debauch. 

It  should  be  the  direct  object,  morally  and 
physically,  of  every  father  and  mother  in  this 
city  to  banish  these  parasites—these  leeches  who 
suck  the  life  blood  of  our  boys— from  Chicago's 
streets. 

Listen,  father,  mother,  there  are  thirty  thous- 
and pure,  dearly  beloved  young  girls  growing 
up  in  our  midst  to-day  who  within  five  years 
must,  under  the  present  business  system  of 
White  Slavery,  put  aside  father,  mother,  home, 
friends  and  honor,  and  march  into  Chicago's 
ghastly  flesh  market  to  take  the  place  of  the 
thirty  thousand  helpless,  hopeless,  decaying  chat- 
tels who  now  daily,  behind  bolts  and  bars  and 
steel  screens  (see  note**),  satisfy  the  abomin- 


**Visit  any  of  the  great  line  of  abandoned  houses  in  the  red- 
light  district  of  Custom  House  Place  or  Plymouth  Court  and  note 
the  bars  and  screens  and  underground  steel  doors. 


Chicago  s  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  57 

able  lust  of   (approximately)   two  hundred   and 
ten  thousand  brutal,  drunken  adulterers. 

I  believe,  as  I  write,  that  the  final  solving  of 
this  reeking,  hideous  question  lies  in  the  moral 
and  Christian  teaching  and  protection  of  the 
growing  girls  of  our  Land.  I  believe  in  a  rigidly 
enforced  law  that  keeps  girls  under  legal  age  and 
unattended,  off  the  down  town  streets  at  nights 
after  a  reasonable  hour.  Harry  Balding,  the 
convicted  White  Slaver,  in  his  confession  before 
Judge  Newcomer  and  State's  Attorney  Roe, 
said: 

"We  would  be  sent  out  by  resort  keepers  to  work 
up  some  girls,  for  whom  we  were  paid  from  $10  to 
$50  dollars  each,  though  the  cash  bonus  was  much 
more.  The  majority  of  them  were  girls  we  met  on 
the  streets.  We  would  go  around  to  the  penny  ar- 
cades and  nickel  theaters,  and  when  we  saw  a  couple 
of  young  girls  we  would  go  up  and  talk  with  them. 
I  will  say  for  myself — I  never  took  a  girl  away  from 
her  home;  the  girls  I  took  down  there  I  met  in  the 
stores  or  on  the  streets." 

There  is  a  league  of  Masonry  worldwide  that 
makes  it  possible  for  a  Mason  anywhere,  in  trouble 
or  distress,  to  raise  his  hand  toward  the  heavens 
with  a  certain  sign,  and  if  there  be  a  brother 
Mason  within  reach,  that  brother,  no  matter  of 
what  nationality,  kindred  or  tongue,  is  sworn  to 
give  him  all  needed  protection.  Listen,  father, 
mother,  sister;  listen,  brother! 

To-day  from  beneath  Chicago's  awful  moral 
sewerage  system,  which  has  sucked  their  hearts 
and  souls  under,  thirty  thousand  trembling 


58  Chicago 's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 

hands  are  held  up  to  High  Heaven  and  to  you 
for  help,  hands  reeking  with  the  blood  on  which 
some  whore  monger  has  fattened,  the  hands 
though  of  your  sisters  and  of  mine.  And  I  believe 
that  here  in  Chicago,  the  greatest  market  for 
White  Slaves  on  the  Continent,  should  be  formed 
a  league  that  would  become  world- wide,  of  earn- 
est, law-abiding  men  and  women  whose  efforts, 
united  with  those  of  the  proper  police,  municipal 
and  Federal  authorities,  would  make  it  practi- 
cally impossible  for  a  girl  to  be  sold  into  or 
compelled  to  lead  an  immoral  life,  and  through 
whose  influence  such  open,  publicly-protected 
flesh  markets  as  our  red-light  and  levee  districts 
would  be  banished  forever  from  Chicago  streets. 
And  I  believe  with  all  my  heart  that  this  can  only 
be  accomplished  by  education,  by  agitation,  by 
legislation,  by  the  ballot  and  by  the  power  of 
God,  directing  a  great  national  army  of  well  in- 
formed, moral  and  Christian  men  and  women 
against  this  vast,  thoroughly  organized,  well 
administered  and  heavily  financed  public  horror 
of  our  Republic. 

I  believe  in  helping,  God  knows,  with  heart 
and  hand  and  money  every  fallen,  or  as  one  has 
put  it,  every  "knocked  down"  woman  in  our 
Land  whom  there  is  the  slightest  chance  to  help 
in  any  way;  but  I  believe,  first  of  all,  in  using 
every  known  measure  to  keep  our  girls  from 
falling*. 

You  and  I  live  beneath  the  only  flag  in  all  the 
world  that  has  never  known  defeat,  and  the  very 
basic  principle  upon  which  that  flag  is  built  is 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  59 

human  liberty  and  human  protection,  and  so  by 
personal  work  and  co-operation  with  every 
other  reform  and  labor  organization  for  the  up- 
lifting of  womanhood,  by  song  and  by  prayer 
and  the  Power  of  the  Cross,  let  us  set  ourselves 
to  help  these  helpless  ones  in  our  midst  until 
the  angels  shall  take  up  the  story  of  shame  and 
bitterness  and  wrong  and  bear  to  all  the  world 
and  to  Heaven  itself  the  swift  acknowledgment 
that  you  are  your  brother's  keeper. 


60 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 


«x 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls  61 

The  Only  Place  of 

Its  Kind 
In  Chicago 

Five   'Hunt sand  and  Forty  NigJifs  Lodging  and 

over  Six  Thousand  Meals  furnished  to 

Homeless  Women  by  the 

WOMAN'S   SHELTER 

733-735-737  Washington  Boulevard 
(near  Halsted) 

during    the    year    ending   September    1,    1911. 

Seventy^  per  cent  of  these  women  have 

been  aided  into  honest  employment. 


A  Hundred  Girls 

have  been  Saved  from  Lives  of  Sin  and  given  a 
chance  to  earn  a  Respectable  Living. 


Our    Doors    are    Never    Closed 

We  are  in  touch  with  every  Slum 
and  \rice  District  in  the  city — ever)' 
Prison  and  Hospital,  and  with 
the  Poorhouse  at  Oak  Forest 


We  are  Non-Sectarian  and  Co-operative  with  all  Reform 
and  Christian  Works 


Chicago  s  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 


A  dozen  Christian   Homes  and  a  Municipal 

Lodging  House  care  for  the  friendless 

down-and-out  man.     The 

Chicago  Rescue  Mission's 
Woman's  Shelter 

cares  for  the  Friendless  "down-and- 
out"  Woman.  Our  Shelter  is  not  a 
"Rescue  Home"  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word,  but 

A  Place  where  a  Glean  Bed,  Food,  Coffee  and  Clothing 
may  be  Obtained  by  any  Homeless  Woman 

not  a  subject  for  Police  interference, 
for  One  or  More  nights  as  she  needs ; 
and  where  she  is  given  Definite  Aid 
to  Immediate  Employment  and  as- 
sured of  shelter  until  she  receives 
her  week's  wages. 


FIVE  THOUSAND  AND   FORTY  NIGHT'S    LODGINGS 

TOGETHER    WITH 

OVER   SIX   THOUSAND  MEALS 

have  been  furnished  to  cold,  hungry, 
Stranded  Girls  and  Women  this 
year  by  Our  Institution. 

Seventy  per  Cent  of  These  Have  been  Aided  to  Secure 
Honest  Employment, 

but  scores  have  been  turned  away 
because  we  lacked  Equipment, 
Warmth,  Funds,  etc.,  to  aid  them. 


Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  \  \  'Jiitc  Girls 


Our  Work  Reaches 

Every  Slum  and  Redlight  District 

in  the  City 

the  Hospitals,  Prisons,  Poorhouses,  everywhere 
unfortunate  women  are  found 

We  co-operate  with  Churches,  Missions,   Em- 
ployment Bureaus,  Charitable  Institutions, 
etc.,  throughout  the  City 

Our  Institution  has  Thirty-one  Large  Rooms 


A  Corner  in  Our  Woman's  Shelter 

What  We  Need  — 

We  need  to  add  Forty  More  Beds. 

We  need  a  better  Hot  Water  System. 

We  need  a  Systematic   Employment  Bureau. 

We  need  another  good  Outside  Worker. 

We  need  Coffee,  Clothing,  Coal. 

We  need  Your  Help,  generously,  in  a  supreme 
effort  to  raise  One  Thousand  Dollars  with  which 
to  accomplish  all  these  things. 


64  Chicago's  Black  Traffic  in  White  Girls 


Schedule  of  Work 


Year  ending  August  31st,  1911. 

Number  of  Night's  Lodgings  Furnished  by  the 

Chicago  'Rescue  Mission's  Woman  Shelter.  5,040 

Number  of  Meals '. 5,200 

Special    Lodgings '....'. ...... 489 

: 

Special    Meals 677 

Calls   and  Distribution  of  Fruit   at  Oak  Forest 

Poor    House  4,914 

Religious  Services  White  Cross  Woman's  Shelter      26 

Jail,  Court  and  Slum  Visits 1,210 

Reform  Literature  Distributed,  pages,  about  .300,000 


Yours  and  His, 

CHICAGO  RESCUE  MISSION 

733-735-737  Washington  Blvd., 
CHICAGO,  ILL. 

PHONE   MONROE  4833 

Mrs.  Jean  T.  Zimmermann,  M.  D. 

President   Chicago   Rescue  Mission  and   Woman's  Shelter. 
Superintendent  Department  of  Health  and  Heredity  of  the  Cook 
County  and  Chicago  W.  C.  T.  U. 


